Some words of wisdom from Never-Trumper Charlie Sykes:

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

The practice of rank punditry chronically inflates the importance of events that are forgotten within days, if not hours. Perhaps, it is the nature of 24/7 opinionating to pump up the significance of moments that will forgotten by the end of the week. That's how we get puffery about "pivots" and "new tones," when there is never a pivot and never a new tone.

The thing to remember is the context: the convention is not taking place in a vacuum. Voters have had four years to watch Donald Trump. They have been inundated with Trump, overwhelmed, and saturated. They are about to get a whole lot more. His campaign has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars pushing many of the tropes we saw last night.

It may be new to you, but it's not necessarily new to the voters who are being targeted.

Here's another question I posed last night: when has any convention ever changed the trajectory of a presidential campaign or materially affected the fundamentals of the race?

https://thebulwark.com/newsletter-issue/a-convention-reality-check/

Sykes has left the GOP and has become a regular on MSNBC. He's a pretty good analyst even though he used to be a Republican.

[Wellstone ruled]

1. Charlie just took a leave of

absence from the GOP. The Sykes family are hard core Rethugs,watch if Trump goes down,Charlie will be back spewing the Party line within seconds.

[napi21]

3. T's more important for a Pub who has temp. left the Party to speak against DT than to hear lots of

Dems because that former Pub is a lot more relevant to the current undecided & even some current Pubs.

[Wellstone ruled]

5. Argument well taken.

Watch Charlie hammer Joe six ways to Sunday in January or even before. Charlie did not change his stripes,he is in survivor mode. He needs the Pundit Job .

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. I'm not so sure. I recently read a comment in that publication

by one of its other writers, about how they were beginning to think they were wrong all along about the GOP. Can't find that item now, but there have been others - Stuart Stevens, for example - who have dumped the GOP. Stevens is particularly interesting because he's figured out that the GOP wasn't led astray by Trump, but that it's always been exactly what Trump is. https://www.washingtonian.com/2020/08/25/stuart-stevens-is-the-biggest-gop-defector-yet-and-very-different-from-his-pals-in-the-lincoln-project/

I'm willing to let people discover the errors of their ways and will happily accept converts. Remember, Elizabeth Warren was once a Republican. Let's wait and see before pronouncing judgment.

[Wellstone ruled]

6. Taking a wait and see.

Old Charlie is entrenched in Wisconsin GOP Party activities,doubt if he becomes a convert.

Good time for those Pundits who critize their GOP Colleges,yup,keep them checks a coming.

[JHB]

7. There's a difference between Stevens and Sykes

Stevens has taken the harder look, put the ugly pieces together, and has real regrets over what he contributed to bringing about.

For Sykes, identifying him as "used to be a Republican" is inadequate: for a quarter century Sykes was Wisconsin's own state-level Rush Limbaugh and was instrumental in getting and keeping Scott Walker in office as governor. He had a major role in that state of fostering a Republican voter base that would love a guy like Trump.

However, when he talks on MSNBC or writes and talks on The Bulwark, he doesn't engage in that sort of backward analysis. He's one of those Never Trumpers who helped create Trump's cult but act as if the Republican Party suddenly and mysteriously went haywire in 2016. And he never fails to blame the Democrats or "both sides" when he can squeeze it in.

One man wrote a confession. The other guy is building a lifeboat.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. True. But I'm hoping some of what Sykes is getting from his MSNBC colleagues

rubs off on him. If it doesn't, then to hell with him; but I'm withholding judgment on him and the other never-Trumpers until I see what happens down the road. People can and do change their opinions.

[StClone]

10. Maybe, but I think "follow the money" has another meaning here

[JHB]

12. Depending on which colleagues you're referring to...

...they're either cut from the same cloth or he's more likely to rub off on them. After all, barring a stolen-in-broad-daylight election, how many MSNBC people will stop using the term "Trumpism", a term which conveniently washes responsibility from people who spent their careers in Republican messaging and conservative media.

Sure, let TLP and other (temporarily)former Republicans speak against Trump to coax over anybody they can (people they trained to reflexively hate Democrats). But it's a truce.

I'm not "judging" them, I'm gauging outcomes. The way they mince words about their own hands in this, the way they take pains to frame all the bad stuff as happening since 2016 with practically no precursors, reeks of maneuvering for position in a post-Trump GOP, of setting up to claim they saved the Republican party.

I'd be overjoyed if they show me to be wrong, but I reserve the right to wait until 2025 -- in other words, through two election cycles -- to issue the mea culpa, should it be warranted. By then they''ll have shown whether they deserve it.

And it's not as if any of them give a rat's ass about my opinion anyway.


Despite the above, I think the thing that bothers me the most is how these guys are collectively "hogging the sheets" in the big anti-Trump bed we're in. On MSNBC, what's the relative air time for NeverTrumpers (and post facto adopted "Never"Trumpers [Joe and Mika]) to speak vs the air time for people who will bring it back to the rest of the Republican party? How often is Norman Ornstein on? He used to be a talking-head show regular right up until 2012, when he published a book that talked about the U.S. Republican Party as having become captured by a dogmatic right-wing fringe. That seems relevant.

[OnDoutside]

11. That's a fair summation of the difference between the two. That said, Sykes was challenged on

In Lieu of Fun, and did seem a bit more introspective than usual, though he is still pro-life and conservative.

[JHB]

13. Can you recommend particular portions of that hour-long video?

I'm willing to give it a shake, but without a little more focus on what he's saying so I can decide whether to circle back and hear the whole thing, it's in the "maybe I'll get to it (but probably not)" category.

[OnDoutside]

15. If you were pushed for time, towards the last 15-20 mins they bring on some of their regular viewers

to ask Charlie (in this episode) one question each, and I think they were worth a watch. From about 27:50 mark on

[JHB]

18. Thanks

[StClone]

14. As is Michael Steele, Rdisregard the Lincoln Project

Conservative sheep/wolf.

[Wellstone ruled]

17. Thanks,

sorry to say,fimiliar with the Sykes Family,nuf said,he is not going to change. Those Talent Fees paid by MSNBC and NBC help Charlies Ego as well as his pocket book.

[Grins]

16. More, he's an opportunist. NM

[Cha]

2. Kick

[Mike 03]

9. Kicking